


Savor

by emynn



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynn/pseuds/emynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian knows it's time to move on. But he can't help but savor every last drop. Set during 5 x 01.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Savor

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Britin 30 Day Challenge on Tumblr, Prompt #7: “One day you fall for this boy. And he touches you with his fingers. And he burns holes in your skin with his mouth. And it hurts when you look at him. And it hurts when you don’t. And it feels like someone’s cut you open with a jagged piece of glass.” - Maureen Medved

Brian sits at his desk, idly deleting angry email after angry email from Cynthia. Apparently she isn’t too pleased with having booked reservations at all the best restaurants and ordered bottle service at the top clubs in LA to his very precise specifications only to have him cancel his trip at last minute. He jots down a quick note to pick her up a bottle of that Chianti she’d been raving about the other day. She’ll forgive him. Eventually. 

It’s for the best. It’s time to stop living in this dream world and step back into reality. Justin’s not coming back. He’s going to make picture after picture as he fucks his way through Hollywood, just as he should. And Brian will stay in Shittsburgh, which, admittedly, has been somewhat less shitty since he’s opened his own business, for the foreseeable future. It’s the world as written. 

Brian’s phone lights up, and before it even rings, he can see the name displayed on the screen.

“Speak of the blond-haired, blue-eyed devil,” he mutters, watching it vibrate on his desk.

_**Ring.** _

How the fuck had it gotten to this? Since when does Brian Kinney stare at his phone and wonder whether or not to answer, like some stupid twat playing hard-to-get with her erstwhile boyfriend?

None of this was supposed to happen. Brian doesn’t even normally go for twinks, but something about Justin that night had just drawn him in. Even his fucking rambling about diarrhea and video games hadn’t put Brian off. In anything, it’d made him more determined to give him a night he’d remember for the rest of his life. Brian had never had anybody like Justin before.

Had never had somebody who was so insistent on more than one night, and not just for sex.

Had never had somebody who made him ache for something more than just a warm mouth and a tight ass.

Had made him want that incomprehensible … _something_ so much he’d be willing to establish rules and limits on his endless fucking. 

Had pushed him and inspired him and called him out on his bullshit and stuck by him even when any sane person would have book a ticket for the first train out of Baggagetown.

Had told him he loved him and seemed to actually mean it.

Had made Brian wonder if that would be such a bad thing. 

_**Ring.** _

He can still feel Justin’s hands on him, can still feel his mouth pressed against his. There’s nothing in the world like fucking Justin, which is a pretty significant assessment given how there’s pretty much nobody in Pittsburgh he hasn’t fucked and no sex act he hasn’t mastered. 

But with Justin, it feels like something new every time. _Every time_. That phrase alone is one Brian never thought he’d be able to say about anybody. His principle has always been and done. In and out. Onto the next.

There’s never going to be a next Justin, though. There never can be. And this isn’t some bullshit romantic tripe, and it isn’t some sonnet about an irreplaceable love. No. This is a cold, hard fact. All the fucking stars in the universe had to be completely aligned for Brian and Justin to have met in the first place, let alone for _this_ to happen between them. The odds of that happening again, for Brian, at least, are one in a fucking billion. Trillion, maybe.

But now that he's had Justin, there's no going back. Now the other men Brian fucks are … well, they’re like his trusty Jim Beam. Pleasurable, dependable, always there to ease the tension or make a shitty night more tolerable. He may look forward to it, and he’d sure as fuck never give it up. But that’s all it is. Beam.

But if Brian’s tricks are Beam, Justin’s a Pappy 20 Year -- heady and sweet, an exquisite rarity with enough of a heat to set Brian’s entire body aflame. A dangerously luxurious habit to start, because once you do, nothing else can compare. Nothing else feels like enough.

It’s a treat to be savored, to be drawn out so it lasts as long as possible, no matter how much he may yearn to down the entire bottle in a night. 

A pleasure so elusive that Brian knows he shouldn’t even take that first sip, since he doesn’t know when the next will come, if it will come at all.

A pleasure so great that Brian wants to drink every last drop with absolutely no regrets.

To have his bourbon and drink it too. 

**_Ring._ **

All through the Liberty Ride, as he’d been in so much fucking pain he’d thought he’d keel over at any second, Brian had thought about Justin. It’d been the only thing that had kept him going, the thought of this incredible young man who believed in him so much. Brian couldn’t let him down, couldn’t let him believe for even one second that his faith in him had been unwarranted. By the time he’d crossed the finish line, barely able to move except to lean against Justin for support, he’d known he had to ask him to move back in. If there was a man who had seen all of Brian’s shit from a front-row seat, from his cancer to his temper to his general asshole nature, and not only put up with it, but _loved_ him for it, what kind of fucking idiot would Brian have to be to not want to keep him close?

Brian hadn’t just seen Justin cheering him on from the side of the road as he made his way back to Pittsburgh. He’d seen himself coming back from the office to Justin so absorbed in his artwork that he didn’t notice Brian entering the loft until he wrapped his arms around him in a firm embrace and squeezed him tight.

He’d seen himself fucking Justin on every available surface, both of them sweaty and breathless and with expressions of ecstasy on their faces that somehow expressed more than mere satisfied lust.

He’d seen them laughing together and showering together and eating dinner together and getting ready to go to Babylon together and falling asleep together every fucking night.

Later, after Justin had spilled the news about his job offer in Hollywood, Brian had chalked them all up to his broken collarbone. He had been fucking _hallucinating_ , for Christ’s sake. All of those visions he’d seen were just that: visions of a fatigued mind. Not real. And that’s just how it should be. What they’d had, with Justin more or less living in the loft even while paying rent at Daphne’s, worked for them. Justin had an easy out. LA had been a non-issue. They had no locks on their doors. Hell, technically, they didn’t even share the same doors.

Except with Justin gone, Brian had begun wondering if maybe he hadn’t been just hallucinating from the pain, but because he’d entirely lost his fucking mind. He sees Justin everywhere. And it's not just the flashes of blond hair he sees out of the corner of his eye, not just the hot ass he spots in the back room of Babylon.

He sees Justin when he orders coffee at the Diner, when he waits for his side of bacon he never ordered but still somehow expects to arrive in front of him with a wink and a grope.

He sees Justin when he’s critiquing his art department’s latest pathetic effort and feels the inexplicable need to tell them to use more orange.

He sees Justin with every clever, witty remark he makes in front of his friends, when he turns to nudge him to make sure he’s paying attention, to make sure he’s noticed, to make sure he’s amused as well.

He sees Justin in his every step, his every laugh, his every outrage, his every fuck.

And when that’s all too much, when Brian thinks he may be certifiably losing it and he doesn’t understand why he’s fucking _seeing_ this man on the other side of the country who he’s completely _fine_ with being thousands of miles away, despite what the near-constant ache in his chest might suggest, Brian retires to his loft.

But of course that’s even worse.

Because if there’s any place where Brian sees Justin most clearly, it’s in his bed.

**_Ring._ **

His phone’s about to go to voicemail, just as it should. They need to move on. It’s only challenging now because the wound’s still fresh. With time, with practice, it’ll heal. One day, he won’t feel so raw. He won’t feel like he’s swallowed shards of glass that are slowly working their way through his system. He may be left with a scar, he can admit that much. But he’s used to those. What’s one more?

He glances down at the phone one last time, waiting to see the screen switch from _Sunshine Calling_ to _Missed Call_.

“Fuck it,” Brian mutters, and flips the phone open. “Hey.”

“Took you long enough,” Justin says, and Brian can hear the smile in his voice. It makes him want to bleed. It makes him want to grab Justin and never fucking let him go.

One day he won’t answer the phone. One day he’ll fill that empty drawer in his dresser back up with all his black dress socks.

One day he’ll learn to leave the bourbon on the shelf, tucked away out of reach. Out of sight, out of mind.

But tonight, he’ll savor one last exquisite drop.


End file.
